Conference examines Google Books settlement

The proposed settlement of a lawsuit involving the Google Books project, an unprecedented effort to digitize the holdings of major research libraries, will be the focus of an invitation-only conference hosted by the University of California, Berkeley’s School of Information.

Conference participants will examine the tentative agreement and its likely impacts on public access, privacy, content quality and content use, and research. The Google project, which includes materials from all 10 UC campuses, is expected to profoundly shape the future of libraries, book publishing, scholarly research and digitization efforts.

The U.S. District Court in New York will review the proposed settlement in October and is accepting input until Sept. 4.

WHEN

9 a.m.-5:15 p.m., Friday, Aug. 28. The program will be Webcast at a later date.

WHERE

Banatao Auditorium in Sutardja Dai Hall on Hearst Avenue, in the northeastern quadrant of campus. A map is online at: http://www.berkeley.edu/map/.

WHO

Panelists will include representatives of the American Library Association, Google, the non-profit Internet Archive, the Coalition for Networked Information, the UC Office of the President and several UC Berkeley faculty members, including information privacy law authority Chris Hoofnagle, linguist Geoffrey Nunberg and UC Berkeley Librarian Tom Leonard.

DETAILS

Reporters who want to cover the conference should contact Kathleen Maclay in UC Berkeley Media Relations at (510) 643-5651 or kmaclay@berkeley.edu before noon, Thursday, Aug. 27.